Monthly Archives: July 2015

Shakespeare and War – Call For Papers

Shakespeare and War
Critical Survey Special Issue

Guest Editor: Patrick Gray, Durham University.

The tercentenary of Shakespeare¹s death fell in 1916, in the midst of the First World War, and the quartercentenary will fall next year, 2016, amid what looks likely to be continuing conflict in the Middle East, in the wake of more than two decades of intensive Western military engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Recent research on Shakespeare and war includes Franziska Quabeck, Just and Unjust Wars in Shakespeare (2013); Irena Makaryk and Marissa McHugh, eds., Shakespeare and the Second World War (2012); Paola Pugliatti, Shakespeare and the Just War Tradition (2010); and Ros King and Paul Franssen, eds., Shakespeare and War (2009).

Notable recent productions include Ivo van Hove¹s Kings of War (2015), re-imagining Henry V, 1-3 Henry VI, and Richard III, as well as the BBC’s acclaimed Hollow Crown miniseries (2012), presenting Shakespeare¹s second tetralogy of English history plays. If production plans hold, the second season of the series, The Wars of the Roses, presenting the first tetralogy, will appear next year in 2016.

In light of this critical and popular interest, as well as current events, Critical Survey invites essays in the range of 5,000 to 7,000 words, inclusive, on any aspect of the connection between Shakespeare and war, to be submitted by 15 January 2016. Innovative critical approaches will be considered, as well as historicist scholarship; in keeping with the aims of Critical Survey, the only core requirement is language that is clear, concise, and accessible.

Informal inquiries about possibilities for essays, as well as proposals for book reviews, performance reviews, and review essays, are welcome and encouraged. Please direct all correspondence to the guest editor, Patrick Gray, at patrick.gray@durham.ac.uk.

Submissions should be sent by 15 January, 2016 by email to the same address, patrick.gray@durham.ac.uk, as Microsoft Word documents. Two hard copies, anonymized for peer review, should also be sent, along with a separate cover letter, to the mailing address for Critical Survey:

Critical Survey
English Literature Group
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordshire
De Havilland Campus
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB
United Kingdom

A style guide and additional submission information is available online: http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/cs/

ANZAMEMS Member News: Professor Sybil Jack, Thoughts on the 10th ANZAMEMS Conference @ UQ, July 2015

Dear members, please find below some reflections on the recent ANZAMEMS conference at the University of Queensland in July 2015, by, Professor Sybil Jack. Thank you for taking the time to give us this short report on the conference.

Thoughts on the 10th ANZAMEMS conference

When you have helped plant something it is impossible not to check from time to time on how it is growing. This large and diverse conference run by a professional conference organisation which by defining me, and some contemporaries, as students or unwaged suitably prevented hubris while suggesting that research is never complete – and that academic life is poorly remunerated— is remarkably different from the various early conferences that were unprofessionally managed by us. Like all conferences its most useful real purpose is to bring together those who, despite the merits of email, can rarely profitably talk at length about their work and shared interests. One can only hope that this is not turning into the job-seeking competition of so many American conferences. The committee’s desire to promote job finding for postgraduates as an alternate reality is admirable in principle but Sisyphus may have had a better chance of true success.

The papers, of course, were the main focus and amongst the many, when one could attend only a few, my interests drew me to those on subjects not currently fashionable especially music and liturgy, law and economy. No-one could resist Jessie Ann Owens introduction on Cypriano de Rore but later papers had enthusiastic but small audiences. Francis Yapp on the Paris Concert Spirituel was outstanding, as was Paul McMahon on how Handel used rhetorical devices to move the affections of his listeners. Claire Renkin cast new light on the tradition of the relationship of Mary and the Magdalen. Marika Räsänen explained how the liturgy might be adapted to create the presence of a physically absent saint, while Leah Morrison enlightened us on Carthusian liturgical practice. Eric Palazzo used liturgical manuscripts to reveal what Dominic’s nine ways of prayer meant to devotional practice. And, if death is the end Cyril Caspar explored how it was tied to ideas of pilgrimage. Carole Carson explained why types of wall paintings were found on particular sides of East Anglian churches in which Irena Larking’s communities were reconstructing their communities in post reformation England. Marcus Harmes showed that bishops without positions could still influence the church raising interesting questions about church/state relations. Lindsay Breach re-examined how the legal ‘use’ came into law in England, and Peter Cunich offered a new idea about monastic economy on the eve of the Dissolution.

These and other papers made the time stimulating and informative the dinner and all the other moments of entertainment only added to the enjoyment.

Professor Sybil Jack’s research focus is on Europe during the 16th and 17th century. She taught in the history department at the University of Sydney. She obtained her degrees from Oxford University, and later completed her Diploma in Education at the University of New England. Sybil Jack began teaching at Sydney University in 1963 as a senior tutor in Economic History, in the faculty of Economics. In 1971 she joined the Arts faculty, upon being appointed lecturer in the History department. She was promoted to senior lecturer in 1975, and to associate professor in 1985. She was Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1986-1989. A year after retiring in 1997, she became an honorary research associate. She is a long-standing ANZAMEMS member.

Society for Renaissance Studies 7th Biennial Conference – Call For Papers

Society for Renaissance Studies 7th Biennial Conference
School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow
18-20 July, 2016

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

  • Professor Neil Rhodes (University of St Andrews): ‘Making Common in Sixteenth-Century England’
  • Professor Willy Maley (University of Glasgow): ‘“Patsy Presbys”, or “Pulling the Wool Off Living Sheep”: Milton’s Observations (1649) and Ulster Presbyterianism’
  • Professor Evelyn Welch (King’s College, London): ‘Renaissance Skin’

We invite proposals for panels and for individual papers from Renaissance scholars from the disciplines of archaeology, architecture, history of art, history, history of science and medicine, literature, music, philosophy and other fields. Proposals for panels (90 minutes) and individual papers (20 minutes) should engage with one of the following themes:

  • Anachronisms
  • Conflict and Resolution
  • Imaging the Nation
  • Reformations and Recusants
  • Beasts
  • Word and Image

The conference will also feature an open strand for papers which engage with themes other than those suggested.

Proposals (max. 400 words) are welcome from both postgraduates and established scholars. They should be sent by Friday 2 October, 2015 to the conference organizers, Mr Andrew Bradburn & Dr Tom Nichols, arts-rensoc2016@glasgow.ac.uk.

Accompanying events will include: visits to leading Renaissance sites and collections in and around Glasgow (including Stirling Castle) and an exhibition of Renaissance prints at the Hunterian Art Gallery.

Further details (e.g. full programme, registrations forms and information about accommodation) will be posted as they become available.

Please note that the Society is particularly keen to encourage postgraduates to offer papers, and we will be able to offer generous bursaries to cover travel, registration and accommodation expenses. Further information about bursary applications will be disseminated in due course.

ANZAMEMS 2015 @ UQ – Collection of Tweets from the Conference

Thank you to all who attended ANZAMEMS 2015 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane for making it such a great conference. I want to particularly thank all those who live-Tweeted sessions and events. It was the first time we’ve really incorporated social media as part of the conference, and I think it went well.

Kiera Naylor (@mskieralouise), PhD student at The University of Sydney collected Tweets from the recent conference at University of Queensland in Brisbane (see the hashtag #ANZAMEMS2015). Kiera’s Storify collection of Tweets can be found here: http://medievalnews.blogspot.ca/2015/07/anzamems-2015-medieval-conference-in.html

Thanks again Keira!

University of Western Australia: Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies – Call For Applications

Senior Lecturer | REF: 494528
University of Western Australia
English and Cultural Studies
Faculty of Arts

Tenurable appointment
Commencing 7 January 2016
Salary range: Level C $110,822 – $127,788 p.a.

The University of Western Australia is a member of Australia’s prestigious Group of Eight and ranked among the top 100 universities in the world, with a broad and balanced coverage of disciplines in the arts, sciences and major professions.

For the past 100 years, UWA has contributed significantly to the intellectual, cultural and economic development of the State of Western Australia and the nation as a whole.

English and Cultural Studies is a highly successful teaching and research discipline in the Faculty of Arts at The University of Western Australia, with a program which encompasses literary studies in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Shakespeare, Australian Literature, Romantic and Victorian Literature, Modernist Literature, Cinema Studies, Creative Writing, Performance Studies, Postcolonial Literatures, Cultural Studies and Literary Theory.

As Senior Lecturer, you will have demonstrated research strengths in one or more of the following: Literature and Film; Postcolonial and World Literatures; Modern European Literature and ideas; and must be prepared to work in these and related areas, as required, in the undergraduate and postgraduate teaching program.

To be considered for this role, you will demonstrate:

  • PhD in literature
  • Outstanding record of research publication relative to career stage
  • Ability to attract research funding
  • Ability to develop, co-ordinate and teach undergraduate units in Literature and Film, Postcolonial and World Literatures and European Literature.
  • Ability to supervise at honours and postgraduate level
  • Curriculum development skills
  • Academic administration skills such as the administration of a successful program
  • Ability/interest in a language other than English
  • Commitment to pursue the best educational practices, and to implement institutional goals
  • Ability to relate well to staff and students at all levels and evidence of a commitment to equity and diversity principles.

Closing date: Thursday 13 August 2015.

This position is open to international applications.

Benefits include 17% superannuation, generous leave provisions, fares to Perth (if applicable) for appointee and dependents, along with a removal allowance. These and other benefits will be specified in the offer of employment.

Application Details:

Applications must be submitted online. Full details of the position’s responsibilities and the selection criteria are outlined in the position description and applicants should clearly demonstrate they meet the selection criteria. Applicants with teaching experience are requested to submit a teaching portfolio as part of their application.

Please see the position description prior to applying: http://www.unijobs.com.au/the-university-of-western-australia-jobs/G9ZZ/senior-lecturer-ref-494528

Further information about English and Cultural Studies at the University can be found at English and Cultural Studies.

Oxford University, All Saints College: Visiting Fellowships 2016–2017 – Call For Applications

The College proposes to elect a number of Visiting Fellows, for periods of one, two, or three terms, in the academic year October 2016 to June 2017. These Fellowships are intended to enable their holders to carry out study and research in Oxford and to participate in the academic life of the College and the University. Visiting Fellowships are open in all subjects. Applications will be considered from staff of any university or other institution of higher learning, from other suitably qualified persons who wish to carry out full-time scholarly work in Oxford, and from those in public life (e.g. law, public policy, or the arts). In making its final choice, the College will give weight to intellectual quality, to the interest and feasibility of the research project, and to the relevance of residence in Oxford. It is not the College’s policy to offer Visiting Fellowships to persons holding posts in Oxford or already resident in, or near, Oxford.

There is no stipend, but Visiting Fellows will be entitled to accommodation, a study in College, and lunches and dinners without charge. Family accommodation is also available. Limited financial subvention may also be offered in exceptional circumstances. Any candidate desiring to take advantage of this provision should indicate this at the appropriate point in the online application form.

Application should be made online in the ‘Appointments’ section of the college website, http://www.asc.ox.ac.uk/visiting-fellowships-2016-2017-further-particulars.

Please contact the Fellows’ Secretary if you have difficulty applying online. Applications must be received by 12 noon (UK time), Friday, 4 September 2015. Contact: Fellows’ Secretary, All Souls College, Oxford, OX1 4AL, tel. (01865) 279308, email: fellows.secretary@all-souls.ox.ac.uk.

To apply for a Visiting Fellowship, please visit: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ALK765/visiting-fellowships-20162017.

Art and the Verdant Earth: The Green Worlds of the Renaissance and the Baroque – Call For Papers

Call for contributions to a multi-author essay collection:

Art and the Verdant Earth: The Green Worlds of the Renaissance and the Baroque

The green mantle of the earth! This age-old metaphor casts the greening of the earth as a divine marvel while also calling upon poets and artists to re-fashion the greenness of nature into art. Ecological writers like Rachel Carson and E. O. Wilson used the expression as a poetic figure for the terrestrial vegetation we take for granted. The topic of Art and the Verdant Earth is the representation of vegetation in the art of the Old Masters. Its ambition is to reveal the visual poetics underpinning the pictorial expression of greenery in images that are traditionally called landscapes.

We invite essays on the visual poetics of a verdant earth. How did artists in Early Modern Europe compete with poets (and Nature) in the fashioning of natural imagery? How did they manage/ manipulate the infinitude of irregularities that is nature’s way? What can be said of the many types of landscape painting (pastoral, sylvan, rural, wilderness, or even river views, clearings, and distressing wastelands) in light of a poetics of vegetation, and in light of the realities of land use? Artists, we believe, followed a kind of lyrical naturalism, which turns the phenomena of nature into the common themes and recurrent motifs of visual poetry. It also links the inexhaustible treasures of the natural world to the poets whose epithets for green matter served as precepts that directed artists in the discovery of just those traits – be it the obdurancy of an oak or the pliancy of a willow- that turn vegetation into eloquent depiction.

This collection of essays is being seriously considered by Ashgate Publishing. Edited by Karen Hope Goodchild, April Oettinger and Leopoldine Prosperetti, it will draw from art history, literature, gender studies, emblem studies, environmental studies, natural philosophy, natural theology, and botany to treat ideas of verdancy and vegetation in the Renaissance. Topics might include:

  • the technical problem of unstable pigments and the difficulty of achieving a durable color green
  • From Giorgio Vasari and Karel van Mander to Goethe: theoretical perspectives on greenery in art
  • The Renaissance print and the dissemination of vegetal imagery
  • Theologies of greenery: the vegetative argument in theology and philosophy
  • the role of vegetation in the painted landscape
  • the authority of poetry in natural imagery: from Virgil to Goethe
  • No Tree, No Pastoral. Trees and pastoral scenery
  • Women, Luxuria and the color green: vegetative imagery and gender
  • masters of vegetal imagery in the European canon
  • sylvan moments in European art
  • historically envisioning greenery and modern environmentalism

Finally, we welcome articles that address the very topical question, “Was the Renaissance green?”

Art and the Verdant Earth: The Green Worlds of the Renaissance and the Baroque will be an illustrated volume, with individual contributors responsible for any permission and/or art acquisition fees. Final essays, of approximately 8,000 words (incl. notes), and all accompanying b&w illustrations/permissions will be due in spring 2016. For consideration, please send an abstract (max. 500 words), a preliminary list of illustrations (if applicable), and to a 100-word biography to leopoldine@jhu.edu, april.oettinger@goucher.edu, & GoodchildKH@Wofford.edu by August 15. 2015. Acceptance notifications will be emailed by mid-September.

Shakespeare in the North – Call For Papers

Shakespeare in the North
Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
2 June 2016

Keynote speakers: Professor Lisa Hopkins (Sheffield Hallam), Professor Richard Wilson (Kingston), Professor Peter Davidson (Aberdeen)

The four-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016 will, more than ever, focus attention on this question: where and to whom does Shakespeare belong? Much critical work has been done on Shakespeare’s global reach and ‘travels’, especially in relation to processes of colonisation and postcolonial emancipation. Through this work, Shakespeare has been shown to be ‘local’ to many environments across the globe, however problematically. Equally, thinking about Shakespeare’s role in, and appropriation and construction by the various, conflicted, diasporic, devolving and devolved communities of the British Isles has become a critical orthodoxy. Yet what of Shakespeare’s position in locations which, while not seeking independence or devolution through political means, retain a strong sense of being different and separate from official (privileged) strands of national culture? Because they do not fall neatly into the categories of either the ‘nation’ or the ‘colony’, these locations and their engagement with Shakespeare can become invisible and critically neglected. This neglect corresponds with such locations’ perceived and actual socio-political distance from sites of cultural and political power.

We therefore welcome 200-word abstracts for 20-minute papers that might address the following questions or related topics:

  • As we approach another moment of significant reflection on Shakespeare’s place in the world, can and should we speak of ‘Shakespeare in the North’?
  • When we say the ‘North’ where do we mean? What are the North’s edges and boundaries? How does addressing questions like these affect perceptions and uses of culturally central figures like Shakespeare?
  • How can we extend our understanding of the tensions involved in seeing Shakespeare as a ‘universal’ writer and seeing him as a property of a particular nation, to a micro-level of regional reception, reinvention, and appropriation?
  • In what ways has Shakespeare been appropriated in the ‘North’ of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland? What effects has this appropriation had on Shakespeare and the regions of the ‘North’?
  • How, for example, do Barrie Rutter’s Northern Broadsides challenge understandings of ‘metropolitan’ Shakespeare?
  • What might the function and history of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s annual visits to Newcastle upon Tyne tell us about the role of professional (and amateur) Shakespearean theatre in provincial locations?
  • In a political climate in which Northern territories actively query notions of ‘British unity’ (in both Scotland and Northern Ireland), what relevance might Shakespeare have to ‘Northern’ political autonomies?
  • What theoretical frameworks might be applicable to understanding ‘regional’ or local Shakespeares?
  • What is at stake in the scholarship surrounding the biographical and religious controversies surrounding Shakespeare’s ‘time’ in the ‘North’?
  • How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries demarcate and perceive the ‘North’ and Northern-ness?

Please submit abstracts to Adam Hansen by 1 January 2016 (adam.hansen@northumbria.ac.uk).

Art and Articulation: Illuminating the Mystical, Medieval and Modern – Call For Papers

Art and Articulation: Illuminating the Mystical, Medieval and Modern
Mystical Theology Network Conference
St Hilda’s College, Oxford
8-9 January, 2016

The relationship between word and image, and the ways in which medieval art (be it visual, textual, or both) operates as a means of expressing the inexpressible, will be explored in a two-day conference held 8th-9th January 2016 at St Hilda¹s College, Oxford. This interdisciplinary conference will bring together theologians, art historians, and literary scholars to examine the ways in which various forms of artistic expression are used to articulate the mystical or that which cannot easily be spoken.

We welcome submissions for 20-minute papers and proposals for sessions of three 20-minute papers.

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to the conference organizers at artandarticulation@gmail.com by 1 September, 2015.

NGV Melbourne – Exhibition of Interest

Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great
NGV International, Melbourne
31 July– 8 November 2015
Open 10:0am–5:0pm daily

Masterpieces from the Hermitage: The Legacy of Catherine the Great showcases one of the world’s greatest art collections. Featuring works by artists including Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez and Van Dyck, the exhibition offers over 500 outstanding works including the finest group of Dutch and Flemish art to come to Australia.

This exclusive Melbourne exhibition will also highlight the innovation and vision of Catherine the Great, whose inexhaustible passion for education, the arts and culture heralded a period of enlightenment in the region. The extraordinary works sourced and commissioned by Catherine during her 34-year reign, created the foundations for the Hermitage today – considered to be one of the world’s greatest treasure houses of art and decorative arts.

The exhibition will offer audiences an immersive experience, recreating the rich atmosphere of the Hermitage to showcase these exquisite works.